In a conventional CATV (Cable Television) system, as disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2004-282210,various techniques are proposed to gather relevant information (including status information) about a set top box (a CATV transceiver) connected to a CATV network from the set top box.
Recently, a system that gathers relevant information about the set top box connected to the CATV network via a cable modem by a management device connected to the CATV network has been proposed.
In such a conventional system, in general, an IP address which is assigned to the cable modem is managed by the management device side, whereas an IP address which is assigned to the set top box connected to the cable modem is not managed by the management device side.
This is because the set top box differs from the cable modem in ways that the set top box is not always connected to the CATV network via the cable modem and is not always booted.
In other words, each time the set top box is booted while being connected to the CATV network, an IP address to be assigned to the set top box may be changed. Thereby, processing load for managing the IP address in the management device increases.